


i wanna lie down beside you

by imgoingtocrash



Series: Twenty-Something [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Couch Make-Outs, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, Resolving that UST, neighborly has a very loose definition, with a happy and sweet ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 12:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10100624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imgoingtocrash/pseuds/imgoingtocrash
Summary: ““Jyn,” he starts, then realizes he’s still got her hand twisted up in his own and drops it. He fidgets for a second, hands going to rest on his waist and then letting them fall. “Bodhi’s probably not coming back until later. The Skywalkers' place is like 45 minutes from here in the suburbs. You can wait here until Bodhi gets in touch with you, if he does. In the meantime, you can come inside and crash on my couch if you have to. I am not letting you sleep on the floor just because you’re locked out of your apartment.””Cassian stumbles upon a tired and frustrated Jyn, who is locked out of her apartment. He invites her to stay at his place for the night. They share a couch, some feelings, and the night’s events turn out to involve quite a bit more than just a neighborly favor.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are! The Part 3 I never planned on, but love quite a lot.
> 
> I’m sort of working on something else for this verse—a multi-chapter non-Jyn-POV thing, specifically—but we’ll see how it goes. I had one chapter done before I actually knew what it was going to be while the other parts all have ideas, but need a little more fleshing out. I always pre-write things like that because I don’t want to leave a fic unfinished, so here’s hoping spring break gives me some inspiration around the script that I need to be writing instead.
> 
> I hope you guys like reading this one, because I really, really liked writing it. Enjoy!

It is 11:00 PM on a Friday, and Jyn is locked out of her apartment.

More accurately, Jyn is sitting in the floor on their welcome mat, the one that says _Go Away_ in a curly handwritten script, softly banging the back of her head against the door so that she can feel the dull vibration all the way through her skull.

Part of this is Bodhi’s fault. 

They had agreed to study together at the library in an effort to actually force each other to keep on task. While the effort succeeded aside from the occasionally too long breaks, the end of the session was where her problem began.

Despite his transfer after his first year from the rival college in town and his generally anxious demeanor, Bodhi Rook was a natural fit within the engineering department. This meant, regardless of not being part of any campus frats or clubs, he was usually invited to any party in his ever-expanding friend circle no matter the day of the week. 

He didn’t always attend, but as they were packing up Wedge Antilles had approached and dropped that the Skywalkers were throwing a party and they both were invited. Jyn had declined, more in the mood to grab food and sleep as long as her body desired instead of sipping lukewarm beer and weaving her way through another house-wide game of drunken nerf gun war. 

(The fact that said game was a regular occurrence at most parties as a part of some campus tradition was sometimes enough to keep her away from the party scene altogether.)

Somewhere during their conversation with Wedge, she’d pulled her keys out of her bag and never picked them back up. 

The library was locked up by the time she was at the apartment door. Bodhi had turned his phone on silent in the library and had apparently never turned it back on, so her repeated calls and texts had done nothing to help. Going to the Skywalkers' home was an option, but it was a bit of a drive and she certainly didn’t have the money on hand to cover a Lyft that far.

Because Bodhi is unreachable, she has resigned herself to the worn carpet of the hallway, assuming that if her roommate doesn’t return soon she will make a pillow of her book bag and sleep here.

That is where Cassian finds her, a stack of papers wedged under one of his arms while the other is digging around in his messenger bag for what she assumes are his keys. She misses having keys. A twinge of ridiculous jealousy runs through her at the thought.

He doesn’t see her at first, preoccupied with his task and not looking towards the ground where she is currently sitting and silently praying to the deity her mother had faithfully believed in until her last breath to magically grant her the ability to unlock the door with her mind. 

She hears the click of Cassian’s door and lets out a frustrated groan. She used to be able to pick locks, damn it. Why did she stop carrying bobby pins around?

“Jyn?” Cassian pauses as his eyebrows furrow together and he focuses on her limp form. He sounds seriously concerned when he inquires towards her again. “Are you okay?”

“If your definition of ‘okay’ includes my tailbone being sore from sitting in this floor for the past hour then yes, I’m okay,” she quips, slowly straightening her back from its previous slouching position and relishing the sharp popping sound.

Cassian’s nose scrunches at the noise and he leaves his own door cracked in favor of walking over to come look at her better. “Are you a forgetful drunk?” he asks, to the tone of _you do know your apartment is right behind your head, right?_

“I’m not drunk.” She gazes up at him with hooded eyes that hopefully show how unimpressed she is with his assumption. He meets the look with disbelief. “I’m _not_ , really. I just forgot my keys at the library and we don’t have any extra hidden around here.”

“Where _is_ Bodhi?” Cassian asks, the insinuation on the tip of his tongue that this wouldn’t be happening if her best friend and roommate was here. Technically, that’s accurate, but there’s an undercurrent that jabs at her responsibility. Or he really just wants to know where Bodhi is. She’s unsure.

“Bodhi is off being a social butterfly with the flipping Skywalkers. Meanwhile, he’s ignoring his phone and I’m stuck sitting here hoping he’ll come home at a decent hour.”

Cassian’s responding look is as skeptical as the words feel coming out of her mouth. On a weekday, maybe, but not on a Friday after working hours in the library. Especially not from a more tolerable party than the ragers oft held by the likes of Han Solo or Lando Calrissian. 

Cassian reaches his hand down to her. “Come on, get up from there.”

She loops her bag onto her shoulder then takes the offered limb and pulls, allowing him to swing her to her feet with a soft grunt. At the very least, from the sympathetic look on his face, Cassian might offer her a ride to pick up Bodhi from the Skywalkers’ place. She turns towards the stairs only for him to grab her hand and pull her along to the opposite end of the hallway. Towards his apartment.

“Wait, Cassian—“ she starts, but he just shakes his head, squeezing her hand tighter and turning to her when they stand in front of his open door. The same one she stood in front of only a few months ago, returning the blue jacket currently draped around his shoulders and accepting Cassian’s offer to walk with him for a cup of coffee the next morning.

“Jyn,” he starts, then realizes he’s still got her hand twisted up in his own and drops it. He fidgets for a second, hands going to rest on his waist and then letting them fall. “Bodhi’s probably not coming back until later. The Skywalkers' place is like 45 minutes from here in the suburbs. You can wait here until Bodhi gets in touch with you, if he does. In the meantime, you can come inside and crash on my couch if you have to. I am not letting you sleep on the floor just because you’re locked out of your apartment.”

“But Cassian, what about you? This is your apartment, I can’t just—“

“You are welcome in this apartment.” He pauses, twists a smile out. “By me, anyway. Kay can live with it.”

“Where is Kay?” She pokes her head into the apartment for the first time, the only time she’s seen inside past the door, actually. Their meetings are usually on campus or outside of the building, splitting off when they reach the fifth floor at the end of the day and going no further. 

There are no visible signs of his roommate, but Kay’s quite sneaky when he wants to be, much like Cassian himself.

“He mentioned something about working late on some project. He’s part of the robotics society on campus.” Cassian shrugs out of his jacket, shutting the door as he ushers her in from the hallway and places his hands over her shoulders as an incentive to allow him to remove hers. At her blank look he adds “It’s like a bunch of robots building robots.”

“Huh,” she mumbles, crossing her arms over her chest and bereft of much else to do but stand in his doorway while he hangs up her coat beside his own. The contrast of the military green and faded blue—the normalcy of what is his and hers side by side—almost makes her blush.

 

At some point—about halfway through the action film Cassian threw on the television as background noise and she somehow became much too involved in to his delight—she realizes Cassian must have called for delivery, because there’s a box of pizza thrown on the coffee table next to where her feet are propped. 

He doesn’t look bothered by her positioning on his furniture, more entertained, so she plants her sock-covered feet in a little more securely and accepts the paper plate being held out to her. Half of a pizza slice is already in her stomach by the time he returns with 2 bottles of beer. He doesn’t even bother to look surprised.

“You could’ve at least let me pay for dinner,” she hums, allowing him to pop the bottle with the opener clipped to his keyring before taking a generous swig. She could swear his keys are mocking her from their existence alone. Not to mention she could be drinking beer at that stupid party and not be locked out of her place right now. At least this one’s cold and maybe not as cheap as whatever Bodhi’s currently got running through his system.

Cassian shakes his head, ignoring her offer of chivalry when she starts reaching for her wallet to pay him directly. “Next time, it’s all you.”

“Oh, next time, huh?” She quirks up her eyebrow, feels the teasing tone flow between her upturned lips, seconds from being half-wrapped around the slice of pizza in her hand.

“Give a girl your jacket, buy her coffee, let her squat in your apartment, and she still won’t agree to a second date. Ungrateful little—“ Cassian is smiling when he says it, going to bump his knee against her own from his spot not far from her hip before she dodges out of the way.

“Oh, shut up.” She digs her elbow into his arm, causing him to let out a little squawk of pain that she doesn’t buy for a second. If she intended to hurt him, he would know it. “And this isn’t squatting, it’s accepting a neighborly favor. I wasn’t aware that this was a _date_ either.”

“Consider it one of the numerous paybacks I’m owed. Those neighborly favors are really going to start piling up soon on your end if you’re not careful.”

She huffs out an indignant little “Ah!” between the last bite of cheese in her mouth, going back to hit him again despite his unoccupied hand up in surrender, laughing as he dodges her fist. “And here I thought you just liked me.”

Like the explosion from the television is happening in real time, the moment seems to slow, him putting down the plate in his lap and rubbing his thumb against the label of the bottle in his hands in a short movement. His body is otherwise completely still, filling the air with tension over the sound of fake gunfire from the speakers.

She feels so stupid, feels like picking up her things and going back to the hall where she deserves to be because she’s screwed it all up.

They’d been so careful until now. When his hand brushes against hers because they walk shoulder to shoulder, sending the 3 AM texts because they’re both still awake anyway, the exchanges of who buys the morning coffee, even when discussing who’s walking who to their next class.

It’s all been so soft and quiet, comfortable and natural, more than she’s ever had in a relationship—in a _friendship_ that wasn’t with Bodhi.

  

(Saw swooped in after her father died, trying to be a parental figure but never able to measure up in that same way of the man that called her _my Stardust_ until his last breath. 

Bodhi just plopped himself into her life with the offer of doing something reckless, because they were dumb and bored. They could run away from everything else when preoccupied and they could do it _together_.

Chirrut and Baze shouldered in without asking, providing kindness, companionship, and a weird extension of family she wasn’t able to anticipate, let alone push away.

Cassian had walked into her life with that ridiculous jacket, but _asked_ to return. There was a difference in that, in his quiet understanding, the prodding questions to know her that never felt interrogating or suffocating, this lull into comfort that somehow became quiet affection.)

  

And now he’s just sitting there with his mouth half open, like he’s trying to find a way to say what he wants to say without the words.

She wishes he’d just rip the damn band-aid off already, look through the scope and take the shot, caress the open expanse of her back and drag the blade straight through. 

There’s no letting anyone down easy here, he has to know that. After talking about her father, her mother, everyone who left without words she didn’t have the heart to hear as it was. After discussing the parents he barely remembers, how it’s just been him and Kay for so long now.

Maybe neither of them were made for something like this after all.

“I do.” He breathes in, shaky out of his chest with a frown. “Like you, that is. I have since we met, really. It’s more than that, though, and I know that’s not what you meant and I know we don’t talk about…whatever it is that we have, but I want you to know. We’re both shitty at this kind of thing, I know, but I want it. Whatever this might be with you, I want it.”

The air previously flowing through her lungs gets stuck somewhere in her throat, at that. There’s a dull throb, possibly the beating of her heart, and it’s that precipice all over again. The ledge they’ve been walking on since they met in the parking lot and what she has almost grown used to skirting around because somewhere deep down she never thought—

“Only if you do, that is. If you don’t, that’s fine, we’re still good, just—“ She pushes the plate to the table and her lips onto his own all in the same movement. The plate ends up on the floor, she thinks, but her fists are in his sweater and her lips hit the intended target.

He’s surprised at first, hand cold from the condensation of the bottle—fallen from his hand to the floor now—steadying her unbalanced position leaned towards him across the couch. 

She starts to pull away, to give him time to react. Their eyes meet for the first time in the last few seconds and she wants to know if the lines of her face are all he sees, if the softness of their lips together makes him desperate and hungry and longing like she is.

Without warning, he returns to her with more force, pushing her back into her side of the couch and half sliding her down underneath him while their lips and legs tangle together. 

One of his hands is on her right hip, moving from her ass to her lower thigh, holding her close and keeping her from falling over the side of the couch that’s barely big enough for all of him, let alone her too. The other is next to her head, keeping him from putting all of his weight against her.

As for Jyn, one arm is wrapped around his neck, the other still gripping his shirt, while the leg he’s holding up is partially wrapped around his torso, making him moan when she digs her heel in a little harder, adjusting their angle.

It’s a frenzy of movement in the tiny space, how she suddenly has them flipped over after a few minutes of him on top, her straddling his hips completely and him burying his face into the column of her throat, a precise bite that makes her grunt into his ear, give a little tug to the hair at the nape of his neck in a way that she hopes communicates _yes_.

It’s fast and breathless, kissing him, touching him over his clothes and then under, hands tracing the muscles of his back under his shirt that’s been pulled up from sliding around on the couch fabric. She can feel the burn of oxygen every time they break apart, knows her chest is heaving right before they come back together, wonders why it took them this long when it feels this good to be so close to him—

Then, suddenly, he stops, the heavy rise and fall of his chest a match for his thumping heartbeat under her palm as they pull apart. They’re gulping up air like there’s not enough in the room to satisfy either of their bodies. Between breaths he asks “Has Bodhi contacted you back?”

She knows the look she gives him must be affronted, because honestly her nails have been scraping against his bare back, she’d just been sucking on his bottom lip, and he wants to know _if Bodhi called her back yet?_

Due the frank non-sequitur, she attempts to peel herself away from him fully, but he uses his arms to keep her legs wrapped around his waist. At least the question didn’t occur because he was bored or tired of what was occurring between them.

Her phone screen lights up in the dark to show 50% battery and no replies from Bodhi.

She shakes her head in the negative and Cassian brings her back down to his horizontal position on the couch by cupping her face in his palms and kissing her softly again, just once. He laughs, shaking his head in what might be disbelief and wrapping his arms around her, bringing her against his chest. The rumble of his voice envelops her, makes her crack up too, feeling mad and joyous and happy above all else as she burrows deeper into him.

They fall asleep like that, readjusting and trading light kisses in the dark, fingers tangled together while their breaths even out against the rolling of the credits on the TV screen.

 

 

(When Kay walks in the door of his apartment at 8 AM, uncomfortable from falling asleep at his desk in the robotics lab and slightly pissed that R2 didn’t deem it important to rouse him, he doesn’t expect the jumble of limbs currently occupying his couch.

Cassian falling asleep there, now that was a possibility. His roommate had the tendency to not sleep while working hard and eventually crash face-first into his reading. That was something he’d usually rectify by either throwing a blanket over his friend or nudging him to bed on his way by.

He’s unsure what to do with the 5’3 mass that is Jyn Erso completely on top of Cassian, breathing gently against his friend’s neck.

What he wants to do, mostly because he’s got to get his fun _somewhere_ , is to drop his textbooks on the floor with a loud slap, hopefully sending Jyn tumbling into the floor and maybe even into the coffee table. However, that would also wake Cassian himself, who appears to have a lot of work ahead of him judging by the stack of ungraded papers that were probably assigned by Draven sitting on the kitchen counter.

Instead, he simply lets out a sigh. The collected data from his observations over the last few months combined with the picture in front of him leads to only one horribly disappointing conclusion: They won’t be getting rid of Jyn Erso any time soon.)

**Author's Note:**

> Bodhi’s backstory of going to the “rival college” was an interesting one-off I couldn’t shake after I happened to write it in on a whim. I figure he’s got at least one school year on Jyn, and that he specifically might have snapped Jyn out of her troubled teens by forcing her to look at the future they could have if they actually tried. When she started taking it seriously, he went with her.
> 
> I have no clue if anyone actually plays drunk nerf wars, but because it’s a modern verse of Star Wars I figure that’s a fun alternative to everyone carrying blasters around.
> 
> The idea that Jyn flusters Cassian out of his natural sort of charm and confidence amuses me greatly. Since he’s not a spy in this universe, he’s still a little quieter and more observant than most, but there’s also a softness he allows himself to have and expose when it matters. Jyn matters.
> 
> Shout-out to everyone that’s commented/bookmarked/given kudos to anything in this series. You’re part of why anything past the original fic exists. I get those lovely, kind emails and it brightens my day. Usually while I’m in class, trying not to smile like a loon.


End file.
